


stargazing season

by kokiri



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Childhood Friends, Feelings Realization, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 06:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11286033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokiri/pseuds/kokiri
Summary: in which jaehyun gives Universe B a shot.





	stargazing season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> this is for emily. thank you for everything.

Jaehyun remembers it clearly, so clearly that it feels like recalling the best scene from his favorite movie. It’s even filmed in this soft, warm lighting to indicate that it’s calling back to some happier time. It’s him, and Doyoung, and Ten – on the brink of graduating from community college, still speaking with the accents they would work so hard to get rid of upon transferring to a big, fancy university on the other end of the state. 

It was, as it had always been, just the three of them.

“You know, my mom says when the world ends – it’ll be awfully quiet, a quiet like you’ve never heard before. Something so quiet it hurts. And we won’t feel a thing,” Doyoung said. His eyes were all round and pretty in the moonlight, yet he was looking a bit off from his normal self. That had a lot to do with the cigarette between his fingers, which he had been waving around for fifteen minutes now, while Jaehyun chased it with a lighter. But Doyoung was being evasive tonight – probably because the truth was that Doyoung didn’t really want to grow up, didn’t want to leave, and didn’t want to smoke cigarettes as much as he pretended like he did.  

“Doyoung,” Jaehyun said, keeping his patience as Doyoung was prone to embarrassment when he felt that everyone else was perceiving him as a baby, “do you want to try smoking or not?”

But Doyoung ignored him. “But, see, dad says it’ll probably hurt for a minute. Some type of pain like no one has ever experienced.”

“Seems like everyone just supposes it’s gonna be some type of thing we’ve never felt before, or heard before, or seen before,” Ten said. He tilted his head, and looked at Jaehyun. “Seems like we’re never going to know how it feels until it happens. Then once it happens, we won’t be with each other anymore to talk about it. Unless we are unfortunate enough to get left behind.”

Doyoung gasped in horror at the thought.

“Ten… don’t say things like that.” Jaehyun scolded him because it made Doyoung feel better, but the truth was that Jaehyun thought about such outcomes himself. Dwelled on them in the dead of night when he couldn’t shut his mind off for long enough to seize just a moment’s rest. Imagined some desert wasteland, and who between Ten, and Doyoung, and himself would survive long enough to see the other two fade away.

“You know none of that stuff’s real, right?” Jaehyun asked. He looked at Doyoung. “Doyoung. Right?”

“I guess so,” Doyoung said, tucking his unlit cigarette behind his ear.

“A boy can dream, though,” Ten sighed.  

And Jaehyun imagined sunbeams made of radioactive death rays that incinerated them all in their tracks. He wasn’t a science fiction person, so he didn’t have much else to go off of besides his ugly imagination. But he hoped that the end of all things would be a little more graceful than that. A future of nothing. Something that killed them all dead before they had to pack up and leave the only home they had ever known.

Ten went home first that night, stumbling from the beers they had pilfered from Doyoung’s parents. Eyes itching from dust and hay of the old barn where they wasted away nights like this one, Jaehyun gave Doyoung a very intentional kiss. And that was that.

 

 

 

 

A little over half a year later and Doyoung is much better at eye contact. He’s lost the accent – they all have for the most part, but Doyoung practiced with such fervor that it gave Jaehyun the impression of some type of shame towards their lives back home, their one-stoplight childhood, and that made him feel a little sore in a big way.

Anyway, Doyoung looks Jaehyun right in the eye – Jaehyun wants to hug him and congratulate him, but now is not the time – and says, all light and unaffected, “I don’t think this is working out.” _This_ being everything, Jaehyun assumes. The last six or so months of their lives. And Jaehyun has to remind himself that it is truly just six months – the years, the pining, the aching and the pain of it all don’t mean anything to Doyoung necessarily. The glimpses of sun kissed skin at age fourteen. The truth-or-dare kisses at age sixteen. The twenty stitches fearfully acquired after a drunken wreck at age eighteen. One night spent figuring that the end of the world would come and go pretty easily so long as Jaehyun had his hand wrapped tightly around Doyoung’s at age twenty.

“Okay,” Jaehyun says, because anything else just sounds too pathetic. Like, _I love you_ and shit like that. _I love you and genuinely considered what it would be like to spend the rest of our lives together. I know that’s kind of stupid, but it’s just something I find myself thinking about a lot. You know?_

Jaehyun figured that no, Doyoung didn’t know. So instead of fighting about it, he walked Doyoung back to his dorm in a weird sort of silence. Said goodnight, went back to his own dorm, and figured now would be as good of a time as any for the world to end.

 

 

 

 

“Ohhh my God,” Ten says. Only he drags it out so that it sounds more like _ooooh myyyy Gaaaawd_ , which he only does when there is no one else around to hear _._ “Oh my God. Nice. Now everything’s going to be all weird between us, which is exactly what I said would happen, but did you listen to me? No, you never do.”

They’ve made themselves comfortable in the cafeteria during that time between lunch and dinner, when only a few stragglers are cramming for exams over melted bowls of soft serve ice cream and overbaked peanut butter cookies. There’s only one line of booths, right along the wall of the entrance, and this is the only time they’ve ever able to nab one for prime conversational space. Ten has a turkey wrap of which he has taken exactly two tiny bites – he doesn’t eat much during spring musical season.

“I can’t argue with you on that one,” Jaehyun says. He looks at Ten. Much like he always does. He finds himself looking at Ten whenever he has the chance, and it’s always been that way.

Maybe the universe split off into two paths when he decided at age fourteen that he was incredibly, extremely in love with Doyoung. Standing on the edge of some alternate horizon was the vague outline of a future that involved Ten more than Jaehyun could comprehend at that moment. He found himself running at lightning speed into the quiet, peaceful security of Doyoung’s presence. Maybe, he thinks, he messed up somewhere along the way.  
  
“It’s a roadblock,” Jaehyun suggests.

“It’s not a roadblock,” Ten counters, “because you know how Doyoung is when he’s over something. When he makes up his mind. You _know_.”

“I know,” Jaehyun admits. “Fuck! I know. I really do. What was it, Ten?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Ten says. “The modern poetry, the weed – the cracks in the weird veneer of perfection.” He waves his finger in Jaehyun’s face like he’s really telling him something Jaehyun doesn’t already fucking know.

“Did… university make me insufferable?” Jaehyun asks quietly.

“To say that would imply that you weren’t insufferable before,” Ten says, because he’ll never forego an opportunity to further drag Jaehyun in the dirt no matter how down and out he’s already feeling. “You know Taeyong?”

“From your musical thing?”

“Yes, from my musical _thing_ ,” Ten says derisively. “He and Doyoung hang out all the time lately. Just thought I should tell you. Like, warn you in advance before the inevitable meltdown.”

“I don’t even care,” Jaehyun says, “and I’m not going to have a meltdown.”

 

 

 

 

But Jaehyun does have a meltdown.

Perhaps meltdown is too harsh in this case, but he does whine and cry and smoke a lot of weed.

He volunteers against Ten’s incessant bitching to help build the set pieces for the school musical. This is mostly because he wants to spend more time with Ten because more time with Ten means less time to think about Doyoung. But what he doesn’t realize is that Doyoung also agreed to help build pieces for the school musical as well, and his reasoning for doing so seems to be heavily influenced by that Taeyong fellow who Jaehyun observes from backstage as being a mad artistic genius. Not really Doyoung’s type, Jaehyun thinks, but what does Jaehyun really know about this newfound Doyoung? The Doyoung who is confident and can maintain eye contact, who doesn’t stutter with a thick accent and so easily display the emotional baggage of the sensitive boy who grew up on a farm under the reign of parents who never understood him. Who is this Doyoung, anyhow?

“If you don’t stop being weird backstage, I’m going to make you leave,” Ten says. Jaehyun nearly jumps out of his skin at the sudden sound of his voice.

“I’m not being weird!” he argues. Taeyong is fine-tuning some choreography for the chorus. He talks with his hands a lot, speaks in weird metaphors, and strains his voice beyond what it is obviously comfortable to make sure everyone can hear him. He’s endearing. Jaehyun watches him. What Jaehyun _doesn’t_ do is watching Doyoung watching him, because that would just be too creepy. He looks at Ten.

Ten looks at him.

“Am I…. being weird?” he asks.

“Yes,” Ten says. He’s not practicing this particular dance routine because he actually has a pretty sizable part in this show and he’s excited about it, Jaehyun can tell. “I’m leaving soon. It’s late and they don’t need me here anymore. Dinner? The cafeteria closes in like an hour.”

“Sure,” Jaehyun agrees.

The weather is pretty cold for spring. Jaehyun looks at the sweat on Ten’s neck and figures the temperature must feel pretty different to the two of them under such circumstances. It’s a quick walk to the cafeteria and they don’t talk much beyond a few passing comments. Jaehyun knows that Ten is pretty worn out from the hours of rehearsing on top of homework, classes, and exams. He figures he can let Ten hold the reigns of the conversation of a little while, let him know when he’s ready to exchange words.

A few minutes later and Jaehyun has settled with a lukewarm taco salad over stale potato chips, with Ten eating some steamed vegetables and unsweetened iced tea. They both are paying more attention to their food than they are to each other, and Jaehyun notes that it is odd for Ten to not be verbally slicing Jaehyun in half over something, anything.

And Jaehyun realizes that he misses that side of Ten. The spontaneous viscosity of Ten. And usually that’s exactly what Jaehyun needs to put himself back on the track.

“Hey,” Jaehyun says. “Remember when we were kids... and you had just started at our school. And the teacher had me show you around, and you didn’t say a single word to me?”

“Yeah,” Ten says, holding a plastic fork between his teeth.

“Did you ever think… in that moment when you first met me, that we would grow up to be best friends? And even go to the same university and all that?”

“No,” Ten admits. Sometimes Jaehyun wishes he had a little tact, or that he was capable of lying. Sometimes Jaehyun just needs a little white lie every now and again to feel better about everything.  
  
“It wasn’t until the next day… I was sitting by myself on the swings, and you and Doyoung were playing dodgeball with a bunch of other kids. And Doyoung asked me if I wanted to play. And told me I could be on your team. And then… Then, you started telling the other team that I was kicked out of my old school for being so good at dodgeball. That I was the Dodgeball Devil and you were pretty sure I’d killed someone before.” Ten is laughing now, more and more with each word.

Jaehyun remembers. “And the other team was so scared! They were seriously pissing themselves. Oh my God, I can’t believe you remember that! I had totally forgotten. You ended up accidentally hitting me in the back of the head so hard I had to see the nurse.” Now he’s laughing too.

“That’s when I realized we were becoming friends,” Ten continues. “And I was right. We’ve had a good run, the three of us.”

“It’s isn’t over,” Jaehyun insists.

“I guess you’re right,” Ten says. “But it’ll take some time for everything to go back to normal. Not for Doyoung. For you.” Ten points his finger at Jaehyun, so close to Jaehyun’s nose that it makes his eyes cross. “And don’t go doing anything stupid to make it all worse, like falling in love with me.”

Jaehyun laughs nervously. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure thing.”

 

 

 

 

They are up late at the library, studying for an exam that they are both certain is going to be the undoing of their GPAs.

“If you don’t stop talking about shit that doesn’t matter, I’m going to go down to the basement floor,” Ten threatens. The basement floor is where silence is completely mandatory and not even whispering is allowed. Some people can actually study like that, Jaehyun has learned. Doyoung is one of them.

“I’m not talking about shit that doesn’t matter!”

“Look, we have an entire fictionalized Biblical war to study right now, Jaehyun, I don’t know about you but I actually want to make a good grade on this exam. You need to be more like me. Studious. Serious.”

Jaehyun can’t believe that Ten is suddenly the serious one between the two of them. But he figures someone must fill that role during Doyoung’s noticeable absence. And Jaehyun is simply not up to the task.

Jaehyun looks at the couple studying a few feet away from them. They’re both reading two completely different texts, reassuring each other of their continued presence by holding hands. He looks at Ten. He’s gotta stop doing that. He’s gotta stop looking at Ten.

“You really think it’s fictionalized?” Jaehyun asks.

“Of course it’s fucking fictionalized, do you believe this shit?” Ten snaps.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh no, we’ve got Mr. College Induced Religious Crisis over here,” Ten says. Jaehyun bursts into laughter and holds his hands over his mouth as to not disturb any of the other students. Ten laughs a little, too.

“We’ve been in here for, like, five hours. Why don’t we take a break?”

“We’re not going to a party, or to the soccer game, or anything like that.” Ten is never one to miss an opportunity to ramble off a list of demands at any given moment. “Taking a break means driving around and finding someplace relaxing to sit and talk about nothing.”

“Okay,” Jaehyun says.

Ten stares at him.

“I’m serious! My parents wired me some money, I have gas in my car.”

Wordlessly, Ten shoves his notebook and text books into Jaehyun’s backpack and Jaehyun wants to scold him for the bad habit of his – never buying a sturdy backpack to last him for the school year, always having to use someone else’s, losing all of his shit, assignments going missing at random because Ten can’t keep track of whose hip he’s been attached to for the last week or so.

But instead of scolding Ten, Jaehyun does this thing where he idealizes the moment in front of him to the point that it becomes fictional. Like, he holds Ten’s hand as they exit the library and temporarily leave their stressful university lives behind for a couple of hours. He’s in Universe B, and this sort of counts as a date, and Ten isn’t totally weirded out by the fact.

“You should probably get that checked out,” is the super romantic precursor Ten offers to the troubling sounds that Jaehyun’s car makes when he starts it out. “I’m not gonna die like this, you know.”

“Like this?” Jaehyun asks, peering over his shoulder so he can back out on to the main road.

“In this shitty car. At this shitty university. With shitty you.”

“You have been so mean to me lately,” Jaehyun says.

“I’m just trying to knock some sense in to you. You’ve been so weird lately, since Doyoung happened. Like if I kicked you, you’d be all, ‘Thank you, Ten. Do it again, Ten. I love being treated like garbage, Ten.’ And while I’m not one to forego giving up the chance to treat someone like garbage if it’s what they’re in to… that’s really not you. You know? You have some fight in you.”

Jaehyun doesn’t say anything to that. He doesn’t even know where to begin.

“You really do. And I want to see it again. I miss it. I miss you.”

And now, Jaehyun figures, would be a good time to switch the overhead light on to check and see if Ten is blushing. He probably is. That’s what happens when he says sort of nice stuff. And that is about as nice as it gets, coming from Ten.

They’re about five miles out of town when Ten says, “Not to, like, devalue our friendship with Doyoung and shit but… you kind of deserve better? So maybe don’t take this as a bad thing.”

Jaehyun wishes he could just take that and tuck it into his pocket for a rainy day. Wishes he wasn’t obligated to respond and ruin the moment. Wishes that he didn’t have to say anything in response. He looks at Ten out of the corner of his eye. Moonlight and Ten. A good combination. Jaehyun wants to stay like this forever.

“You’re just saying that. You’d say the same thing to Doyoung.”

“No.”

“You’re weirdly resentful of him lately.”

“I guess.”

“You aren’t even going to argue with me about it?”

“No… no.”

Jaehyun puts on his turn signal and pulls off into an empty gas station parking lot. He unbuckles his seat belt and turns to face Ten properly. “Tell me. Why.”

“Why what?” Ten asks, playing dumb.

“Why you suddenly hate Doyoung. You love him. He’s one of your best friends.”

“Maybe because, like you, he’s sort of an emotionally constipated oaf. Maybe I’m tired of being the only person who has their proverbial shit together? Maybe you two were really annoying together, but you’re even more annoying apart. Consider that, Jaehyun. Consider how I must feel.”

“Last time I checked, this wasn’t about you.”

“Except it is. It is about me.” His accent is showing more and more with each word. “On account of you are using me to fill the void in your life that Doyoung left. So it is about me. What did I tell you? Huh?”

Jaehyun is silent.

“I _told_ you not to fa—”

And then Jaehyun does something really stupid. He cups Ten’s face in his hands (cheeks warm, skin soft, and it’s all so very, very Ten-like of him to just be perfect at any given moment) and then he kisses Ten on the lips.

“God _damn_ you, Jaehyun!” Ten whines, smacking Jaehyun’s hands away. He brings his fingers to his lips and gives them the slightest touch. “You’re so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says. He falls back into his seat, hands off of Ten for now. “You should know. I’ve thought about that a lot for the last like… ten years of my life.”

“Whatever,” Ten says, not quite as pissed off as he wants Jaehyun to think. “But me, too. While you were too busy chasing after—you know, never mind. It’s not worth talking about. Can we go back to campus now?”

Jaehyun has so much more that he wants to say, but he’s not in the mood to argue. It seems like that’s the only thing the two of them are capable of doing, anyway. The drive back to campus is mostly silent, not particularly uncomfortable. Jaehyun takes note of that and stores it away in the back of his mind to tell Ten later –  that against all odds, Jaehyun never once felt rotten in Ten’s company.

And Ten will appreciate it. Maybe.

 

 

 

 

Jaehyun must have missed the memo for the spontaneous Fire Safety Exercise! that woke him up with such an intensity that he felt like he might be dying. He could hear his RA in the hall urging everyone out to the parking lot, assuring them that it was just a drill, and reminding them that failure to comply means a two-hundred dollar fine from the university.

Mother _fucker_ , Jaehyun hates this school. He grabs his phone and his keys, pulls on an old t-shirt and tennis shoes, and shuffles out the door. He bumps shoulders with Doyoung in the hall, long enough for him to glance at Doyoung’s phone and ascertain that Doyoung was currently texting that Taeyong fellow. But since Jaehyun was turning over a new leaf of actively not being obsessed with Doyoung’s every move, he told himself that he absolutely could not possibly give any less of a shit.

“The lies you tell,” Ten says once they’ve met up by the dumpsters behind their dorm hall. He’s frowning, clearly exhausted, and Jaehyun can’t help but laugh at the fact that he is wearing nothing but boxer shorts and an oversized sweater adorned with their high school mascot. No socks, no shoes.

“Were you asleep?” Jaehyun asks pointlessly.

“Yes, and I’m so mad. Tech week starts tomorrow so I wanted to be energized, but I totally forgot about this bullshit fire safety fucking shit. Fuck, I’m livid.”

“Am I allowed to sit in on tech week?”

“Lazy. Fucking cheapass. You just want to do that so you don’t feel like you have to actually pay to see the show.”

“That’s absolutely not it! Hateful.”

“Yeah. Damn right I’m hateful.” He glances over Jaehyun’s shoulder, gives someone a nod and a wave. Jaehyun whips his body around. It’s Doyoung. “Taeyong lives in the other hall. That’s why he’s not here,” he hollers.

Doyoung lets out a huge sigh of relief. “I get so anxious when people don’t answer my texts.”

“Yeah,” Ten says, as if he can sympathize.

Jaehyun needs to say something to Doyoung immediately to prevent the steadily approaching Awkward Apex. “Ten forgot his shoes. Isn’t he an idiot?” he offers.

Doyoung laughs. He looks at Ten’s bare feet and laughs again, until he’s all red in the face. “Wow!” he says.

“Whatever, laugh all you want. I’m here to entertain,” Ten grumbles. “Honestly, I’m going back inside. This isn’t even fair for people like me.”

“People like you?

“Special people. People who are above the rules. I’m going back.”

“What if they catch you?” Doyoung and Jaehyun ask in unison. Damn.

“I don’t care, I’ll pay the fine. You guys stay here. Bye!” Ten scopes out the basement entrance to the dorm hall and enters without being noticed by any of the RAs. He gives Doyoung and Jaehyun a wave through the window on the door and then he is gone, leaving Jaehyun and Doyoung to their own devices.

“So,” Jaehyun says.

“Yeah…” Doyoung says. He looks at Jaehyun with this sort of smile that seems sympathetic almost. And Jaehyun really hates it when people look down on him like that. Or maybe it’s just because it’s Doyoung. “I think,” Doyoung says, “that it’s great.”

“What’s great?”

“You and Ten. It just works – I’ve always thought so. The way you two always find each other. It… it just works, you know?”

Jaehyun doesn’t want to play the game where he pretends like he has no idea what Doyoung is talking about. “You think so?”

“Yes. I really do.” His smile turns into something a little more normal. Not pity, just understanding. And with that, Jaehyun is much more content. “It’s beautiful out tonight.”

“Yeah. Look at the stars,” Jaehyun says. “Reminds me of when we were kids. And your dad would always say the same thing when he herded us all outside to look at the stars—”

“It’s stargazing season, kids!” Doyoung says, lowering his voice to sound more like his father. He’s pretty close, better at these types of impersonations the older he gets. “Always stargazing season, no matter what.”

“It’s stargazing season, kids,” Jaehyun repeats quietly.

They stay like that for a while, talking in unnecessarily hushed voices about childhood anecdotes, the days they spent birdwatching and nights they spent stargazing. Jaehyun doesn’t feel so sour anymore.

“Remember how much Ten loves it,” Doyoung says. “Remember how much it always calms him down. I think it’ll come in handy.”

Jaehyun couldn’t forget that for anything in the world. He thanks Doyoung, but for what, he isn’t quite sure.

 

 

 

 

What happens next is that Ten officially bans Jaehyun from sitting in on the show’s tech week rehearsals, so Jaehyun is going to have to wait until opening night to watch, just like everyone else. He says he’s doing this just to remind Jaehyun that he’s not so fucking special.

Jaehyun figures that’s fine. There’s something romantic about the idea of him surprising Ten with flowers back stage after the has taken their final bows. And if that doesn’t win Ten over, then the stars are always waiting for them outside – and it is stargazing season, after all.

He takes a deep breath. And then he lets that deep breath out as a forceful sigh.

Here goes – it’s all or nothing now.


End file.
